ABSTRACT
A notable feature of the changes in the racial division of labour between 1965 and 1990 is that African advancement into traditionally white jobs has been uneven. Whereas Africans have made substantial inroads into certain occupational classes, they have made almost no progress in others. Before I discuss these different patterns of African advancement, however, I will first examine those occupational categories which were filled predominantly by Africans prior to the apartheid period. These occupations are, of course, the worst-paid and most arduous jobs in the formal urban economy. They include unskilled manual jobs as well as semi-skilled machine operative work in the mining, manufacturing and construction sectors. Although less important numerically, Africans also predominate in unskilled and menial jobs in the service sector which involve the tasks of cleaning and serving. In 1965, about 70 per cent of workers in semi-skilled machine operative jobs and in menial service sector jobs were African. In unskilled manual jobs in the primary and secondary sectors the proportion of workers who were African was 86 per cent. Since 1965, most employment growth in these unskilled and semi-skilled occupations has been filled by Africans and, to a much lesser extent, coloureds. Since the mid-1960s, therefore, the proportion of Africans in these occupations has increased somewhat further to about 90 per cent of all workers.1 Important changes in the racial division of labour, as opposed to the occupational division of labour, are therefore not found in unskilled and semi-skilled manual employment. The analysis of jobs which have traditionally been associated with white employment, however, reveals a quite different pattern.
